ictchris

Yeah, it was REALLY flat, Vigurs and Polworth didn't drop off or make forward runs. Maybe if you had wide midfielders who could tuck in, a striker who could drop deeper and a centre half who could carry the ball out we could get away with it but we have none of those things.

He was utterly anonymous yesterday. We seem to have signed this Trafford guy from Finland, I'd expect him to play in central midfield further up of Vigurs. I had thought that we were wanting a diamond midfield with Vigurs deeper and Polworth attacking but they didn't seem to do that yesterday. .

I realise it's early days but Robertson sounds like he doesn't have a clue what he is doing. After the early season results he slated the team and now says that the players think they are bigger, better than they are. He signed seven of the players on the pitch yesterday. His tactics are dated and completely ineffective. Last season we stuck with a poor manager until the bitter end, are we going to make the same mistake again?

Mulreany is an attacking player yet in nearly 40 appearances for us he hasn't scored or had an assist. He has pace but needs to use it to create chances, he doesn't do that at the moment.

I heard a rumour that Alan Savage and Dougie MacGilvary are looking to buy the Highland Hospice shares.

How many charitable donations did the club receive over the last fifteen years, thirteen of which were played in the top flight and the other two saw us win the division that we are now playing in?

Today's XI Ridgers - An utter bombscare. Didn't deal with a pass back for the first goal. Seedorf - Got roasted by Cardle, an absolute hosing. Elsdon - Immobile, lumbering, terrible touch and awful distribution. Hesitant in actual defending as well. Mckay - Again, used the ball terribly, nervy and hesitant in defending. Chalmers - Stood off for several of the goals, hit aimless balls to no-one in possession. Mulreany - Drew a couple of fouls, including for the goal and created moments of danger but he had no end product. Vigurs - Used the ball well and was probably our best player. Polworth - Played centrally and was utterly anonymous, aside from getting booked. Calder - Another practical no-show. Had zero impact. Baird - Worked hard but looked in a different wavelength to his partner and missed chances. Oakley - Again worked hard and had a could of decent touches but did nothing. Robertson - Very poor. We played 4-4-2 but with two wide men and Vigurs and Polworth flat in the middle. That meant we couldn't really control the midfield and were pushed out by Nat Wedderburn. We didn't seem to make any runs into space and were really, really static when attacking, no-one dropped off and tried to get any 2-on-1s or overlaps. This meant we had to hit long balls which didn't work and gave possession back to Dunfermline, who could then punish us by attacking our terrible defence.

We were absolutely abysmal. We have signed a parade of useless jobbers and bit-part players. Our defence was terrible, you can't really explain just how bad they were. Dunfermline could just hit a ball long and they had a chance to score, so poorly organised and hesitant. They couldn't use the ball at all, so many loose passes, straight to the opposition. We passed the ball more times to Wederburn in that game than we did when he played for us! Vigurs did OK but the rest of the midfield were static and anonymous. People have said we should play Polworth centrally but he did nothing other than get booked. If he wasn't an Invernessian people would be baying for his blood. Mulreany drew some fouls with his pace but that's he did, his delivery was useless. Up front, Baird and Oakley looked on completely different wavelengths at times but Baird worked hard and Oakley had some decent touches. Make no mistake about it though - we are relegation candidates in is league. What two teams are going to finish above?

How will we line up for this one? ------------------- Ridgers ---------------- ---Seedorf ---McKay---Elsdon---Calder--- ----Mulreany --- Polworth --- Vigurs --- Chalmers--- ---------------------Baird------------Oakley--------------

He's got the same agent as Susan and Seedorf, we seem to be using them for recruitment.

In my experience the opposite tends to be true, people who succeed in life and in running their own businesses are rarely liars, rip off merchants or untrustworthy. In my working life I've worked with and for pretty senior people in very large organisation and they tended to be straight down the line. you do get liars and bullshitters in many organisations though. I think when people are out of their depth and don't know what they should be doing they often end up trying to cover for themselves by covering their arses and trying to deflect things.

We can add lying about the Draper transfer to the list. Also, I see from the Courier that none of the transfer fee will go into players. What is it being spent on? Its clear that the board lied when they initially said that we would be keeping the squad that finished last season, they lied when they said that we needed to maintain season ticket prices to ensure we could compete in this division, they lied when they said that Draper requested a transfer. Why are the board constantly lying? People end up doing this when they are either completely out of their depth and incapable of carrying out their duties or they have a moral lacking that leads them to lie. Neither option is particularly attractive. I notice that John Robertson has also not backed the clubs standpoint, which is pretty telling. Also, this is going to have a huge impact on our club. Players used to see a move to Inverness as a good thing for their career, the chance to compete at a high level and win a move elsewhere - Rooney to Birmingham, Watkins to Barnsley, McKay to Wigan etc. We had a good reputation. Now we are lying about our transfer dealings, hawking players around for transfer, refusing to play players if they don't move. Why would anyone come to us? I know for a fact that in Scotland our club is seen as an irrelevance at best, as useless and a joke at worst in the football media and playing circles. What's happened this summer is going to have significant knock on affects to our clubs ability to survive.

County this and County that - it doesn't make a difference what they do. We need to sort things out for ourselves not spend all the time like a bunch of fish wives worrying about someone else.

Assuming we are going to bring people on after this, who will we target? Back in for Kevin Fraser?

We have been in the top flight 13 of the last 15 seasons and the other two we won the First Division - being in the top flight is NOT punching above our weight. It's that sort of small-time,defeatist thinking that's lead to where we are now.

Yeah, I thought about buying a seat this season even though I live in Edinburgh and wouldn't make that many games. Why would I bother now though, paying more money for what's bound to be utter crap. The club don't seem to realise that it's give and take in football - they have to give the fans something, at least some hope. Usually this is a great time of year, you can be optimistic and look forward to the season but our entire organisation is on a downer. That is going to have a massive impact on the club, they need to realise this.

Aye, thinking about it a few of the new board members seem to have a similar background to those guys.

He has experience of working in football in a variety of different roles - player, assistant manager, coach, head of development.

Ah yeah, I'm looking forward to the Duncan Shearer Under 12s Memorial Tournament. Should be good The best hope is that someone like Alan Savage or one of the Muirfield Mills guys has some investment planned and will gut the place. Considering we've appointed two former Orion employees to important roles you'd think that Savage might be interested again but you never know. It's also worth noting, as someone did on my Twitter, that the club have a shocklkng reputation within Scottish football at the moment. We've had Highland League players turning us down, the media are contemptuous of us mirroring the way that they've been treated, and if we don't change this we'll find it hard to attract players and rebuild.

Tonight's sale of Draper to Ross County has (hopefully) concluded the worst summer of the clubs entire 23 year existence. starting with relegation, we've seen the following. - We sack Richie Foran after the end of the season, which was the right decision but taken so late that the rightness or wrongness of it becomes secondary. Why persevere with someone for so long when he obviously wasn't good enough, suffer the consequences and then take action when it's too late? The fact someone with his history at the club was despatched with a two line statement was also a joke. - The club then reshuffles the boardroom, with a load of Inverniessian estate agents, solicitors and whatnot leaving and joining. No-one really has any idea who any of these people are, none of them have any experience at running a football club whatsoever. The only chink of light is appointing Danny MacDonald, who does know about this, as COO last week. - Following relegation we don't reduce season ticket prices and issue unbelievably arrogant press release about getting promoted as champions. The tin eared idiocy of this is made more apparent by subsequent events - we ask fans to stump up money to ensure we can cover costs but then release and sell our high earners? Surely someone must've realised how this would go over? The 'apology' afterwards is nothing either, don't get into situations where you have to apologise. - The club then embarks on the most nonsensical summer of PR idiocy its possible to imagine. The only way it could be worse is if Finlayson invited a few Japanese trawler boats to dock outside the stadium and slaughter some of the dolphins. First we get rid of stalwarts like Duncan Shearer by text message, then we adopt radio silence from our social media team, then when we get someone to man the Twitter account, they accidentally like filth and our club outs out the stupidest statement in our history about it. It's been said that lots of this stuff was done by volunteer but you could employ a 16 year old media student and they'd do a better job. - In between this we praise the candidates who applied for our job and were interviewed and then... appoint someone who didn't apply, hasn't worked as a manager in five years, hasn't been particularly successful at this level in 13 years and was shocked to get in. I hope he does a good job and he's at least a positive person but looking at things logically the odds are stacked against him. He's also working with people he hasn't brought in, no doubt due to cost, and will be under pressure very soon if we don't go on a run. The fact that he's already started slating the team and players doesn't bode well. - In terms of playing we've lost some stalwarts, as you'd expect, and replaced them with jobbers. Being absolutely honest about it we've signed raw youth players doing the trialist rounds, jobbers who've been released for being no good or guys who've most likely come from agents. We don't have a solid defender and we don't have someone to score double figures in this league. We also someone got into a war of words with an ex player managing a HL club that we have loads of links with over us trying to sign their best player and captain for no money. An utter embarrassment. i don't really mind about us selling players or who they go to, all players leave evenuslky and it's better to clear out players too soon than too late. Our squad was stale and under performing. It's the fact we are certain to sign utter useless jobbers to replace the players who've left that is really concerning. I don't think I've missed anything. I don't know if the board or the manager or the Chief Operating Officer wants to give us an update on what the plan is with all this but it's difficult to see where it's going. We don't have an identity as a team, we don't have a structure to ensure that we succeed as much as possible. We have made investment available but no-one is going to invest, apparently. Is this it for the foreseeable? As fans we need something to look forward to, more than a win against Forfar, although that's probably going to be as good as it gets these days, I just hope that at least somebody in charge at the club realises what a state we are in because it needs to change. We are more likely to leave this division down the way than up at the moment and if the people in charge don't get that then we are in for a hard few years until they do.

I think Conor Pepper has retired after a serious injury.

What did he say?

Lochee Utd play in the juniors, East Region. there is a North region, don't think it's of the same standard as the East or West.

Is Scott MacDonald definitely suspended for this?

Danny MacDonald has worked for the Orion Group as a Business Development Manager among other roles so he does have experience outside working as a coach. 'Colts' side in the Highland League is interesting - I can't really see the HFL going for it. I think back in the days when The Highland League had an odd number of clubs we used to play the inactive team every week. A few teams are starting to look at moving to a 'B' team as opposed to a development team. Brentford in the Championship and Rangers up here to name two.